I had the same reaction as this, in that the dominant worldview today views extreme levels of animal suffering as acceptable but most of us would agree it’s not, and believe we should do our utmost to change it.
I think the difference between the examples you’ve mentioned and the parallel to existential risk is with the qualifier Luke and Carla provided in the text (emphasis mine):
Tying the study of a topic that fundamentally affects the whole of humanity to a niche belief system championed mainly by an unrepresentative, powerful minority of the world is undemocratic and philosophically tenuous
Where the key difference is that the study of existential risk is tied to the fate of humanity in ways that animal welfare, misogyny and racism aren’t (arguably the latter two examples might influence the direction of humanity significantly but probably not whether humanity ceases to exist).
I’m not necessarily convinced that existential risk studies is so different to the examples you’ve mentioned that we need to approach it in a much more democratic way but I do think the qualifiers given by the authors mean the analogies you’ve drawn aren’t that water-tight.
I had the same reaction as this, in that the dominant worldview today views extreme levels of animal suffering as acceptable but most of us would agree it’s not, and believe we should do our utmost to change it.
I think the difference between the examples you’ve mentioned and the parallel to existential risk is with the qualifier Luke and Carla provided in the text (emphasis mine):
Where the key difference is that the study of existential risk is tied to the fate of humanity in ways that animal welfare, misogyny and racism aren’t (arguably the latter two examples might influence the direction of humanity significantly but probably not whether humanity ceases to exist).
I’m not necessarily convinced that existential risk studies is so different to the examples you’ve mentioned that we need to approach it in a much more democratic way but I do think the qualifiers given by the authors mean the analogies you’ve drawn aren’t that water-tight.